Maintainer's Corner

Readme for lol-0.6.0.0

This package is primarily a library providing interfaces for lattice cryptography
primitives. There are two main interfaces: 'Cyclotomic' and 'Tensor'. The
Cyclotomic interface is the outward-facing API that is used to build cryptographic
applications like pseudo-random functions, encryption, etc. The Tensor interface allows
multiple backends to implement the functionality used by the Cyclotomic interface.
Unless you are writing a new backend implementation, you shouldn't need to
understand the Tensor interface. However, you *will* need an implementation of the
Tensor interface in order to test, benchmark, and run applications.
Most of the functionality in Lol is exported by two modules:
* 'Crypto.Lol' exports the primary *interfaces* of Lol
* 'Crypto.Lol.Types' exports concrete types that would be used by most
instantiations.
For a brief introduction to relevant mathematical notation, see 'Crypto.Lol'.
Overview of key modules, roughly from highest- to lowest-level:
Cyclotomic layer:
* 'Crypto.Lol.Cyclotomic.Cyc', which defines an interface for using cyclotomic
fields, rings \( R \), and quotient rings \( R_q=R/qR \); as well as many
other commonly used operations, e.g., converting
between rings, decoding and decomposing elements, modulus
reduction/rounding, etc. 'Cyc' is a safe wrapper around the
'UCyc' type, which exposes some representation-dependent operations.
'UCyc' (and hence 'Cyc') is implemented using a generic 'Tensor'
(described below).
Tensor layer:
* 'Crypto.Lol.Cyclotomic.Tensor', which defines a class that encapsulates all
the necessary linear transformations for operating on representations of
\( R \)- and \( R_q \)-elements, e.g., the CRT transform, converting between
the powerful and decoding bases, generating error terms, etc.
* You will need an implementation of the 'Tensor' interface in order to use Lol.
Two implementations can be found at
<https://hackage.haskell.org/package/lol-cpp lol-cpp>
and <https://hackage.haskell.org/package/lol-repa lol-repa>.
Base ring layer:
* 'Crypto.Lol.Types.FiniteField', which gives an unoptimized implementation of
finite field arithmetic. To use this module, you will need an instance of
'IrreduciblePoly'. These instances provide irreducible polynomials
for various degrees and base fields. One (orphan) instance is provided for
characteristic 2 fields of size up to 2^128 in
'Crypto.Lol.Types.IrreducibleChar2', and is exported by 'Crypto.Lol.Types'.
If you need to use an unsupported finite field, define your own
instance of 'IrreduciblePoly' and do **not** import 'IrreducibleChar2'.
* 'Crypto.Lol.Types.Unsafe.ZqBasic', which is a basic implementation of
\( \Z_q=\Z/q\Z \) arithmetic.
* 'Crypto.Lol.Factored', which contains type-level support code for
factored integers. It also supports "reifying" 'Int's at runtime as static
types and "reflecting" those types as integers back to the code..
'Factored' types are mainly used to represent cyclotomic indices.
Tests and benchmarks can be found in the packages <https://hackage.haskell.org/package/lol-tests lol-tests> and <https://hackage.haskell.org/package/lol-benches lol-benches>,
respectively, though they are instantiated in individual tensors.